


Along Every Horizon

by Las



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Desert, F/M, Future Fic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-01
Updated: 2011-08-01
Packaged: 2017-10-22 01:59:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/232469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Las/pseuds/Las
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the prompt: "If Dean were to die on Sam now, I don’t think Sam would go crazy or vengeful or try to open hell gates or drink demon blood or anything. I think he’d even try to go on, knowing that that’s what Dean would want and really, really not wanting to fuck up Dean’s last wishes again. But I think he’d just fade, get killed by some random monster, not out of any suicidal drive, but just because he was having trouble paying attention to details like food or sleep or ravening creatures with lots of big, nasty teeth."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Along Every Horizon

**Author's Note:**

> The excerpt Sam quotes in this fic is from David Jasper's "The Sacred Desert".

  
banner by [](http://august-monsoon.livejournal.com/profile)[**august_monsoon**](http://august-monsoon.livejournal.com/)  


 

Sam gets these crazy ideas sometimes like maybe he should call Lisa or even track down Cassie, or something, anything, and they don't even have to talk about Dean, but maybe they can _be_ about Dean together, and that doesn't even make sense. That's just astonishingly creepy. And it's not fair to Lisa, because what would she even think? Dean's giant of a brother showing up at her door like Dean did a couple of years ago, but with even less of a claim.

Stop, stop thinking about it, stop.

_Look, it's just that you're the last place where my brother ever felt like home._

All this runs through Sam's head as he drives past the turnoff for Cicero, and once upon a time (a few times upon a time, or more than a few), he took that turn and followed the road to the Braedens' house or the construction site where Dean worked, the bar where Dean hung out. Sam would wait and watch, patient but hungry.

Sam's okay. Really. It's just that sometimes he drives past these landmarks - some of them real, some existing only in memory - and something sharp cuts through his entire being, and his mind starts bubbling over with hypotheticals. What if he calls Lisa? What if he calls Bobby? What if he prays to Cas? The last time he talked to Bobby was when Bobby called him two months ago, and the last time he talked to Cas was when they burned Dean's body.

Sam's okay. He's okay.

He turns the radio up real loud and picks up speed.

+

It's the first time he's gotten laid in ages, and during the post-coital haze, the girl - Allie? Callie? - runs her small hands over Sam's scars, curious. They're all new scars. When Sam was pulled out of hell, his body was made anew, like Dean's. Refuckinghymenated.

"How'd you get this?" she asks.

"Hunting accident," he says.

"And this?"

"Same."

"What about this one?"

"Uh. Fell down some stairs."

When Allie/Callie leaves, she doesn't leave a number. Sam looks at the mirror, his collection of scars. They feel like someone else's. He misses his old ones and the stories behind them. Dean knew the stories behind most of them, but Dean is part of the southwestern desert now, ashes mingling with the dust. It's only fitting. Dean is the landscape Sam knew best, every highway and byway, every horizon, and this is truer now that his absence instills him into everything Sam sees.

Sam is no stranger to secret-keeping and false identities. It's just that now Dean isn't here to pry those secrets out of him. There is no one to try and claim him for themselves. There is nothing for Sam to fight against, none of the friction that sanded him down to who he was. Is. Was.

Yeah.

He falls into a deep sleep that night, which is rare. Sex helps, he supposes. Usually Sam stays up all night, making salt rounds, sharpening his knives, polishing his guns, keeping the TV on so the silence won't weigh him down. The dawn would find him sitting alone in a room full of weapons, waiting for what, he doesn't know. And then the whole goddamn cycle begins again.

+

Wait, hold up - Sam's got another idea.

What if, right? What if he kidnaps a person, bleeds them dry, and uses the blood to summon the Trickster? Because this has to be some Trickster joke. It's got to be.

Maybe one day soon, Sam's gonna wake up in a motel in Florida and it's gonna be Wednesday, and the radio is will play Huey Lewis & the News and Dean'll have that shit-eating grin on his face and he will say, "Rise and shine, Sammy."

Stop.

Stop thinking about it.

+

This is a fucking son of a bitch, but Sam has been in this position before. Sitting in the Impala and bleeding all over the upholstery, sewing his arm shut. There is precedent. Fuck, he better not go into shock.

The vampire is dead. At least he accomplished that part. He is not proud of his victory, however. Sam felt distracted throughout the hunt, and instinct can only go so far without concentration. It's not that hunting feels like a burden; it's that it doesn't feel like anything at all. It is something that keeps slipping through his fingers, and Sam doesn't know what to make of the fact that he kind of doesn't care.

The blood is getting everywhere.

What is he even doing?

His vision blurs and the sensation of stabbing himself repeatedly with a needle doesn't even hurt anymore. _I'm going to die_. He's going to pass out. _Sorry, Dean._

But Sam closes his eyes and gasps, "Cas."

He made Dean one last promise and he's going to keep it.

"Cas, who art in heaven, lay me down to fucking... Cas, Castiel. _Cas!_ " The last syllable is a hoarse shout, the desperate cry of a man addled by pain and the proximity of death.

He hears but doesn't see the beat of wings.

He passes out.

+

When Sam comes to, he is curled up in the backseat of the Impala, stiff in every limb. His mouth tastes like shit. His head is woozy. How long has he been out?

Castiel is nowhere to be seen.

There's still blood all over Sam's clothes and staining the upholstery, but no wound at all on his arm.

Well, amen. And nice to see you too.

Whatever. Company is a hassle, and on Cas's part, Sam imagines rebuilding heaven takes up a lot of his attention. He only needed Cas so he can keep his promise to Dean. _You live a good life, Sammy_. It's the last thing Sam can remember promising anyone, but sometimes he wonders if he's really honoring it. Sam has been meandering through the country these past months as if he might stumble upon a good life by chance.

Like maybe he might turn a corner and Dean is standing there like--

Stop.

Just stop.

+

In the middle of Arizona desert, Sam pulls up to the side of the road and gets out of the car. He still knows this place. The silhouette of the mesas in the distance. The crooked cactus that looks like a hitchhiker flagging down a ride. Sam brings one bottle of water and walks into the desert with steady measured steps.

He read this thing once in a complit class in Stanford:

_You do not go into the desert to find identity but to lose it, to lose your personality, to become anonymous. You make yourself void. You become silence. It is very hard to live with silence. The real silence is death and this is terrible. It is very hard in the desert. You must become more silent than the silence around you. And then something extraordinary happens: you hear the silence speak._

The sentiment haunts him these days. Occasionally he lets himself wish that they never burned and salted Dean's body, then there might be a chance that Dean's spirit is still around, the ghost in the desert whose voice Sam might hear if he tries hard enough.

Sam walks and walks, Cain wandering the earth, and this desert is the only place where he doesn't feel like an intruder anymore, where he doesn't feel something in its penultimate phase. The Greek word for 'wanderer' is 'planetes', the root word of 'planet' and Sam thinks it's fitting. It's not necessarily that he is a wanderer; he traverses along a clear orbit anchored to the gravitational force of a bright and unavoidable star.

The sun burns mercilessly above him, and Sam keeps on walking. He is getting close.

When the water bottle is almost empty, he says Dean's name just to say it, an experiment. How does it still feel on his tongue? He goes through weeks without saying his brother's name even once, and sometimes when he realizes how long it's been, he'd say it like some secret, there in the silence of the Impala or the darkness of his motel room. _Dean_ , a soft exhale, and Sam says it twice more as if by saying it three times he can conjure his brother, like in fairy tales.

The place where they burned Dean's body isn't noticeably marked. The signs Sam can point to are barely discernible: that shrub, those rocks, the colors in the sky at this time of day. Sam knows, he just knows. This is where Dean is.

This is the first time Sam's been back since the actual funeral, and now he has no idea what to do. He is so tired, and he can't tell if the ache in his heart is physical or phantom. He sits down, an awkward folding of his body until he is cross-legged on the ground, elbows on his knees and eyes on the horizon. He waits. He waits and waits, and for what, he doesn't know. But he's here, and he figures that's a good enough for now.  



End file.
